


Subsequence

by padalekci



Series: Occurrences [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Based on True Events, Self-Discovery, Self-Reflection, depression hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 21:44:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19326691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padalekci/pseuds/padalekci
Summary: read antecedent first.





	Subsequence

When I woke up the next morning, I felt fine. Laid there, waiting for my mind to wake up completely. Some of my friends were already awake, I could hear them tightening the ratchet straps outside.  
That was when I remembered the day prior.  
Creed was paralyzed. Waist down. I punched my cousin’s girlfriend and he yelled at me. I cried. The dam had broken.  
We were back in town by eleven. I’d already told my mother. A short text: ‘Creed’s back is broke’  
I went to the highschool with my youngest cousin. Ended up crying when I told our math teacher. She’d figured we were there to say hello, but I started crying as soon as she made a joke that I can’t remember anymore,  
I thought it strange, you know. I don’t cry.  
We told our english teacher and I remember her asking me if I wanted to go to some room with an acronym that I’d never heard of.  
I told her ‘fuck no’ and we went home. The day I accept a therapists help is the day I shave my damn head. Never gonna fucking happen.

My dad called me later that day. I don’t talk to him. Disowned the fat fuck, more like. Asked me ‘how’s that kid doing?’  
Like using Creed’s actual name would give away the fact that he had people spying on us. I still don’t know how he found out, seeing as no one that knew about the accident that early would tell him.  
Drove me nuts that he didn’t have the gall to use his real name. As if saying it out loud was taboo. He knew Creed’s name. Knew all our names. He was just too much a pansy to say it.

On the drive back from Idaho, we talked about that one character in Friday Night Lights. The mexican stem cell treatments. I asked if we should try to put together a fundraiser.

We made eighty thousand dollars during the three months Creed was in an institution in Colorado. I designed a logo-two, actually. We made stickers and shirts. Ordered those gummy bracelets that are usually given out for free. Had a banquet put on, made a deal with a restaurant.

Creed got back and we joked like old times.  
Went out and got ice cream, which was something we never did.  
The next day was our graduation party. Creed didn’t finish high school, not really, but his grades before the wreck were good enough to warrant him a diploma. My cousin accepted it for him and the ground shook with applause when he accepted it on Creed's behalf.  
At the graduation party, we gave Creed the money we’d fundraised. All of it. Probably the biggest graduation present someone’s ever gotten for not actually graduating.  
Eighty thousand dollars.  
They passed around a bottle of fireball. I remember it burning on the way down.  
The next day we went to our family’s cabin.  
I got drunk for the first time. Captain Morgan and Crown of some kind. I was floating; almost forgot that I’d watched my best friend topple to the ground like a rag doll. That was what I thought about most days. How lucky I was. How aware I was of my legs, my feet. The way my shoes would rub in places. Creed would never feel that sensation again. Maybe that’s why I started refusing to wear shoes that wouldn’t give me blisters. It was a reminder.

The couch was scratchy, and older than I was. But this was a house that was usually covered in plastic, my grandmother didn’t want dirt on anything. So the couch was clean, smelled almost new under all the dust. I passed out on it, or maybe just laid there, the TV playing the usual nonsense that came on at four in the morning.  
It was at six am when Ben stumbled in from outside. I’d sobered up, so we cooked frozen pizza with swedish fish melted underneath the pepperoni. Added more cheese. Cut it with scissors because we couldn’t find a pizza cutter.  
The TV was playing Grey’s Anatomy. Some episode where they miraculously repair a spinal cord. The two of us stared at it a while, not speaking.  
Ben shut the TV off and we went in the garage to eat the pizza. I drank more. Don’t remember much else of the month of June.

You see, I consider myself to be a very boring person. I never do the dangerous things that I remember. I’m always a spectator. ‘Yeah, my friends and I got chased by the cops; no, I wasn’t driving, wasn’t even the reason they were chasing us.’. The kinds of stories that’d be the exact same had I not been there.  
And maybe that was why I started being more outgoing. Talked louder; stopped apologizing. Drover faster than I usually did, because hey, I had a new truck that wasn’t a twenty year old diesel. Ripped the governor out, started driving too fast. 160 was no big deal on a straight shot of highway. Hundred would do me just fine on the curved mountain passes. Started jumping off of cliffs, drinking more. Bought a vape pen; and oh god, the hypocrisy.  
My aunt would yell at us. ‘Why the hell do you all have to get drunk all the goddamn time? Every time you’re together; it’s all about that fucking alcohol” but hey, you give a dozen eighteen year olds free beer, what do you think’s gonna happen? I’d still clean up their messes, throw shit away, ignore their complaints when I’d clean up spills instead of playing a game of beer pong.

I started getting in fights. Not starting them, but ending them. We’d go to a bar, somebody ends up getting smart with me or someone I consider family.  
Maybe I egged them on. Led them into throwing the first punch. But I’d always end the fights. Never with cheap shots; I knew how to fight, what with growing up the way I did. Never thought i’d actually use the knowledge that came along with growing up with boys that thought it funny to beat the fuck out of me for shits and giggles.  
And maybe the recklessness was because I was getting older, less apologetic. Maybe it was because I knew how much life could change in a second. Wanted to actually live. Have something to tell stories about, that weren’t just from my bystander point of view.  
I’d always considered fighting and being too quick to anger to be trashy. Still do. But I don’t really care. I don’t tell stories about it, but it’s nice knowing I can take someone out- should I need to. The people in my town are all quick to anger, start fights that other crackheads can’t finish. Well bitch, I’m the king crackhead.

Later that year, I moved to a different town. Stopped going out. Didn’t make friends with anyone.  
Became a recluse.  
And sure, I’d still go back home; see my friends, my family. But it wasn’t the same.  
We weren’t the type to keep in touch over text, or anything else. If we wanted to see each other while in the same town, one would have to call. We didn’t talk if it wasn’t in person.  
I had a hard time making friends because no one had been through the same shit as me. It was bizarre. They’d all want to get high and talk about what? Who they were going to fuck the next day? I was never into that shit. Never cared. Can’t see myself giving a shit about it after seeing the shit that I have. I mean, how can you be interested in such inane subjects after living through the shit that I’d seen? It’s not like Creed’s wreck was the first one I’d ever seen. It was just the first one to have lasting effects. I’d seen others crack their skulls open on rocks, end up in comas. But they turned out just fine after a few months. This was permanent.

Our grandma once saw Creed in his chair, told him ‘boy, you better get up out that chair ‘fore you end up in it permanent’. We’d all just laughed. Didn’t bother correcting her, seeing as she’d forget in a few minutes or get real upset.  
It was that same weekend that we ended up with another wheelchair. One that was donated to Creed by the family of a man who shot himself in the head after being in a chair less than a year. One of our friends wheeled himself around in it all weekend, ended up crying on the lawn, realized how much it sucked to be living from a chair.  
It was harrowing, seeing as the man had died in that same chair. The whole story put the idea in our mind that Creed would take a turn for the worst; mentally, and decide to give up.  
I had nightmares that night. Finding Creed dead in the yard.  
Had a lot of nightmares like that.  
But it wasn’t always Creed dead. Sometimes it was myself, waking up and not being able to feel my legs. Losing the ability to walk, to drive, to do anything independently. Sometimes it was my family, my friends.

Driving had always been a release for me. Anytime I was upset, I’d go out and explore the backroads, lose myself in the dirt stretching out in front of me. The gravel grinding itself under my tires would take the fog away from the corners of my mind. Let me dream up ideas, plans, things that I wanted to do before I died.  
Now it seems more like a chore. Maybe it’s because I feel guilty. Maybe it’s because I feel like driving is what got us all into this mess. Yet I still do it. Still go for midnight drives through canyons with no cell service or other traffic. If I happen to miss a turn and go over the edge, no one would know until morning. Maybe even later. Maybe it’d be weeks, seeing as the canyons here seem endless. Can’t see the bottom, what with all the trees.  
I’d never call myself a careless person. I used to tell someone where I was going. Think things through. But I became more impulsive, more outgoing. Willing to argue with someone over things that matter. Because now, life feels more fleeting than ever; like it isn’t real.

 

Why should it matter that I’m doing reckless shit when anything could end it all?


End file.
